


we’ll only know for certain if we try

by and_hera



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Character Study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-20
Updated: 2019-10-20
Packaged: 2020-12-24 16:02:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21102161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/and_hera/pseuds/and_hera
Summary: Gansey is an unfinished tune, the final chord hanging suspended, waiting for a grand finale.





	we’ll only know for certain if we try

**Author's Note:**

> this is bc maggie livetweeted trk and i got in my feels. i’m so emotional i cried over gansey like twice today. so have some sleep deprived rambling. it’s short and choppy but i Love Him  
title is taken from sleeping at last’s “one,” which is the most gansey song ever

Gansey knew from the very beginning he was living a story. And he knew how it would end, too. Because what other way is there for it end? A sad boy (who, realistically, has no reason to be sad! but the feeling remains) searches for a sleeping king, leaving this sad boy unable to show a real self to anyone because he doesn’t have one, not anymore. He can’t tell which parts of him are Smiling President Cell Phone and which parts are Too Quiet, Too Worried Boy.

Gansey is an unfinished tune, the final chord hanging suspended, waiting for a grand finale.

He has his friends, the ones who always put him back together at the end of the day. He has Ronan, who lets him be wild, and Adam, who lets him be afraid, and he has Noah, who lets him be silly, and he has Blue, who lets him be quiet (not Too Quiet but quiet, the kind that means peace and satisfaction rather than loneliness).

But oh, Gansey never feels like he’s truly one of them. It’s irrational, he knows. But he is Privileged and Has Money and while these are good things it makes him decidedly an outlier in his little group. His group with a boy whose dreams haunt him, a boy whose parents drag him down every step of the way, a boy who is dead, a girl who is the outlier of her family. Maybe this is why he likes her, Gansey muses. They’re both the outsiders of their peculiar families.

Because Gansey dreams of the beestings at night, he freezes up so badly he can’t breathe sometimes when he hears a faint buzz outside. Gansey is so sad, so scared that he can’t sleep, sometimes. So he builds a cardboard Henrietta to give himself power over something and plays it off as a joke because he’s  Gansey , he has everything anyone could ever want in life, how could he be sad? How could he feel lonely?

Gansey has everything anyone could ever want in their life and yet he yearns, and yet he despises his money and his inherited throne. So instead he makes one of his own, one made of tree roots, and he finds a twisted crown of raven feathers and wood, and he shouts “I’M COMING FOR YOU, GLENDOWER.” 

In those moments, he finally feels alive. Like his whole life was just a prologue to this day, standing in an unknown forest breathing in crisp air.

But he knows. He knows he’s running on borrowed time because when he finds Glendower, when the last chapter of his book is closed, it will be just that—closed. Because Gansey doesn’t know who he is, who he’s supposed to be without something, someone, to search for.

And of course, Glendower is dead. He thinks he knew long before, really. He just didn’t know how to give it all up.

For the briefest of moments, Gansey thinks that maybe he’ll be okay. Maybe he’ll get to live and learn and grow because oh god, he doesn’t want to die. He doesn’t want to die.

But it goes to hell again, like he expected, and Ronan is bleeding black and Adam has lost his hands and eyes and Gansey— Gansey  knows  this is it. He feels it down in his soul that this is the end of the line for him. This was already a second life, he’s lucky he got a few years out of it.

So he says, “Blue, kiss me,” and she does and he’s gone.

He can somehow still hear them.

They’re teaching Cabeswater something. An important lesson.

He’s tall,  they say,  And lanky. And he’s awkward and he has terrible handwriting. He has no sense of fashion. He can’t see for shit without his contacts. He does a thing when he puts his hand to his temple.

He was a king, friends say.  This is how you build a king.

Oh, he thinks, before he suddenly blinks back into life.

And Ronan was the one being unmade but now Gansey is the one who has to rebuild.

He does. Slowly and steadily. He kisses Blue again. He talks to Adam and Ronan and Henry. Somewhere in his heart, he misses someone. He can’t remember who. He can’t remember what the voice that spoke to him about Glendower for the first time sounded like.

The conductor moves his hands, and it isn’t a final chord that’s playing but just a fermata, holding out the note. The song continues, each measure as beautiful as the last.

He rebuilds and relearns and reloves. He thinks that maybe he doesn’t need to be the President Cell Phone all the time in public. If he was a king as his other self, maybe that scared, small part of him is enough.

Gansey finds himself instead of Glendower. Gansey becomes a king instead of discovering one. Gansey breathes.

Maybe he’ll be okay after all.

And one day, the conductor will end his symphony with a flourish, and it will leave the audience breathless.


End file.
